Gadgetory

hmmm things has got a little bit extreme around here brothers with an extreme sex welcome back to check yet city ladies and gentlemen this is brian coming back to you guys today with a review of the x99 extreme 6 motherboard from asrock now this motherboard definitely comes as a pleasant surprise to me considering the amount of headaches I've had with other x99 motherboards in the past few months and ultimately I'm going to be recommending this motherboard today because it's just feature packed it's got a lot of utility and it just works properly so anyway before we get on to a conclusion we'll look at the physical overview of the motherboard then we'll look at the features then we'll go through the BIOS have a little look at that I'll do it I'll even do a mic test for you guys and talk about the audio and then we'll get onto the conclusion so let's move on so as soon as you get this motherboard you'll notice that it comes packaged extremely well or pun intended comes with enough accessories or your solder cables you even get a 2 and 3-way SLI bridge connections there however looking at the motherboard from top to bottom we can see we start at the top here we've got a big chunky heatsink with x99 written across the top there that's blue and silver writing on top however upon taking off this heatsink we could clearly see that asrock have implemented a really good vrm on this multiple we've got a 12 phase well it looks like an 8 + 2 + 2 phase design they're two phases being for the right side for dims 2 phases being for the left side too dim for dims there and 8 phases being dedicated to the CPU itself so upon closer inspection of the vrm we can see and to my delight we've got niche akan 12 KCAP seer these are platinum caps and they're rated at 12,000 hours under extreme conditions pretty much the best in the business we've also got 60 amp chokes there and upon closer inspection of the MOSFETs you'll actually notice that even though it looks like a single MOSFET design underneath the layer that you've got a dual mosfet packed into one MOSFET so essentially you've got 24 MOSFETs flowing across this 12 phase power design looking at the Dimsdale we've got four dims on the right as I mentioned earlier for dims on the left and continuing on the left here we've got two USB front out headers but also got a chassis fan and on the node of chassis fans we've got four here located from two at the bottom and two in the middle that'll give you a total of four fans on the chassis and system fans and at the top here we've got a three and four pin CPU fan connection so a total of six fan connections or six fan-out headers on this motherboard also on the middle fan point there you'll notice a PCI Express molex connection there to give this PCI Express ports a little bit extra power really good if you're going with 3-way or two-way SLI also on the left here you've got an ATX 24 pin connection they're located in a pretty good spot above that you've got a USB 2 port so I don't know who would benefit from this maybe me even though I've got my front USB port out still there so maybe for someone who hasn't got front USB 2 or 3 out and they're on a test bed and they can't get access to their real USB out so I guess that would make a really good solution for you if you're that rare person though besides that we've got the 12 volt CPU pin located again in a really good spot as well so moving down the motherboard here we've got can solder three ports here all on the same one controller so they've gone away with using different controllers is you might be used to in the past like an Intel or an as media controller and they've just going with the one Intel controller there besides that we've got the asrock heatsink and the logo cooling the platform chipset hub which is connected via a thermal pad that's what they've used for the thermal interface material and besides that we've got the dr. debug LED which is a nice testbed feature or debugging for anyone having problems I like that addition you got there some test bed features here the power button and reset button as well as a HDD saver connection there even though personally I don't use it and I probably wouldn't recommend using it and then besides here you've got your front panel outs here your power LED HDD light and just speaker etc besides that moving to the right here we've got our chassis fans as we mentioned before we've got our front out USB 2 ports and then we've got a BIOS selection switch which is actually really good I mean I like that you can select it so if you come into a bad bias flash you can then quickly change it and then flash the bad boss again and you're back in business so I like that feature I also like that you've got an actual manual clear CMOS jumper here as well for those people without a screwdriver and then besides that we've got a comport out in a Thunderbolt out as well so upon closer inspection here we can see they've got the purity sound - and I don't think the named honestly doesn't do it enough justice because the bond closure and especially we've got niche akan caps which are really good you've got a TI Texas Instruments dedicated headphone amplifier which is the NE 5 v 3 - you've also got the realtek 1150 as well which has really low signal-to-noise ratios that's all shielded with an EMI shield and they've also separated the audio from the rest of the PCB to reduce noise again so the audio solution is really good as you'll hear later with the mic in test so not only have they got the headphone out really good they've got the mic input really good as well to keep noise down so for someone like me this onboard audio solution is actually really good so moving on into the middle of the board here we've got three pcie 3.0 16 speeds slots here with the first and second slot being spaced out considerably well that's good if you're going with a dual SLI air-cooled configuration there however it's a bit difficult if you're going with maybe a water-cooled setup or something like that so looking to the side that you've got PCI 2/1 speed slots then you've also got an ultra m2 slot there for an SSD as well you've also got your CMOS battery there and you've also got your dual BIOS chips right there below that you've got a PCIe mini I believe and then let's move on now to the rear of the motherboard so moving on to the back here from the top to the bottom we've got two USB 2 outs we've got a ps2 out below that we've got a clear CMOS button which in my opinion is an absolute necessity on the x99 platform considering every CPU on this platform is overclockable below that we've got 2 USB 3 ports below that we've got an Eastsider out below that we've got a qualcomm atheros Ethernet out or ni c and then besides that we've got 2 USB 3 outs below that again we've got 2 USB 3 outs and besides that we've got an Intel an IC or a Gigabit Ethernet out so you got two men I seized on this solution I really like that below that we've got a mic in line in and headphone out I love this solution being someone who uses it and records a lot you've also got manual 5.1 analog out there as well as an optical out which apparently supports up to 7.1 channel audio as well now another thing to mention about this as well as all these components here are guarded with as rocks spike protection as well which they claim I actually can't test this because I don't have a lightning bolt on my hands but anyway with that being said that's a physical overview of the motherboard let's move along now to the actual look at the BIOS and we'll look at the software that comes included I'll do a mic test talk about the audio and talk about a few extra features with this motherboard then we'll move on to a conclusion so let's take a quick look in the asrock UEFI extreme six BIOS here the x99 we can see here that it's feature-packed it has everything that I would personally want from a BIOS CPU configuration you got there all the core ratios you've got individual core ratios you've also got the big clock strap there as well different filters and spread settings Dhiren configuration again it's pretty intricate you've got all the things you could want I mean the voltages there as well set different voltages and adaptive mode etc voltage mode you can put your CPU input voltage as well and different other voltages there so you've also got five configurations and profiles that you can save to the boss and going on to advanced you've got more settings there tools even more settings now one thing I will point out that I like about this is you can if you've got an internet connection from a router or something you can just pretty much flash the BIOS without having to do anything just click internet flash and it will download the latest blast for you and flash it so that's a really cool feature that I like about the as rocker motherboards you get your hardware monitor their security options your boot options there as well and then you can exit Save Changes and exit as well okay so let's move on now to some power consumption figures here and some benchmarks for you guys so I decided to run a quick sinner bench test here with the gigabyte X 99 new t4 and then I ran it with the extreme six all other hardware being the same or clocks on the RAM and CPU being the same and as you see the asrock extreme 6 I'll just pull up the direct benchmark scores for you there it won by just a little bit it was nothing much in it there they performed pretty much identical although the ads work estranged 6 did win by a very slight amount there and that could be put down to variance however living on now the power consumption this is what bothers me a little bit about the extreme six the gigabyte x99 UD for used up about 320 watts at four gigs and then when we contrast that overclocked to the extreme six that's using up about 380 watts from the wall keep in mind this is on an 85% efficient power supply or a bronze rated power supply if you had a better rate of power play these figures would be a bit low but it's still worth mentioning that the XD extremes six it uses up more power than the x99 UD four also on idle it was using up around about 15 watts more than the UD 4 as well compared to the x99 slight loss off the top of my head the overclock figures are a little bit worse than the x99 slide plus as well so maybe that Joule MOSFET design isn't as good as it seems or it's good for temperatures but it's not good for power consumption because I believe off the top of my head the more MOSFETs you have all the faster the MOSFET switch the cooler they will indeed stay however the more power is wasted when the switch is going off when the MOSFET switches from one to another that's what I believe maybe some experts can chime in here but so maybe that Joule MOSFET design although keeps the temperatures down it might be a bit of a detriment in terms of power consumption so let's move on now to onboard Audion you're probably wondering why I'm talking on this mic over my studio mic and the reason is I wanted to show you how little hiss or how little noise it was on the mic in as you guys can see here I'm just using the levels of 60 + + 30 DB gain with no noise suppression and so what this means is if you probably did this on a normal motherboard you'd probably get a lot of his coming through there's absolutely no hiss coming through a really good job they've done a really good job on the mic end and the line in its well on to the actual headphone out when I did a crosstalk tests and I just turned the volume to max and then I just put my left ear on there and the right channels playing and you just listen really carefully if you can hear noise coming through the left channel that's crosstalk it's basically when noise leaks from one channel to the other there was basically none on this on board on audio solution or barely audible at all just like the and as easier 7k that I recently reviewed so awesome job has works done an awesome job on the onboard audio solution this time around really good job there anyway with that being said let's move on to a conclusion where I'll sum up some of the things that I like and some of things that I don't like about this motherboard so in conclusion what can I say about the asrock x99 stream 6 well a lot of good that's for sure I mean first of all it works it's an X 99 motherboard that works and it works well it runs cool my overclocks don't crash wants this once I found my stable over blocks they don't crash the motherboard doesn't crash at random unlike the X 99 UD for from gigabyte that I got here it doesn't blow up like the MSI's slide + motherboard that I had come through and doesn't get contaminated like that either so oh and old the extreme sticks just works it's a solid motherboard let's look at the good side of things though the onboard audio solution it's phenomenal I don't need my Anders easier at 7k anymore I just bought that and I was enjoying it and then I tried this onboard audio solution and I can go sell the N des now because I don't need it it's useless now because this has such low crosstalk as well the mic in was really good as well the functionality of the board I like the fact that as rocks gone with function over fanciness instead of implementing fancy LEDs on the board they've given you the clear CMOS button power reset buttons Julie and I sees things that make sense and that's a really good thing as well another thing I will point out that I didn't point out earlier in the video was the they put a sapphire black sole during mass code on there and I personally I prefer this over the matte black coat that a lot of motherboard manufacturers have been using I mean some people will like the matte black coat and that's that's I mean that's awesome for you but for me it's like synonymous with cheap I mean I used to drift cars and when you crashed your car what did you paint your car with matte black paint for your on if you didn't have money to fix it so and that black to me is kind of synonymous with cheap that's just me okay so now we looked at some of the positives let's look at some of the negatives and some of the things I think that could be improved on with extreme six and the first thing is the power consumption as you guys saw that it was quite a bit behind the UD 4 and it was a little bit behind the SLI Plus as well from memory so maybe the dual mosfet design even though it keeps temperatures down it might be working against asrock in that it's making the board a little less efficient so that's something maybe that Azeroth won't might want to think about in the future maybe going with a different mosfet design because I think the gigabyte uly4 has the most efficient implementation of a VR ram out there at the moment also the idle temps suggested this as well as it was hovering around about 15 watts more than the UD 4 and a little bit higher than the x99s sli plus as well so something as ROC might want to look into though it may have to do with the BIOS settings too as you saw there even when I fixed my voltage at one point one volt it was still going up to one point one five volt like it was giving it a 50 millivolt over vault with fixed modes so that's something that asrock you guys might want to look into maybe the BIOS needs a bit of a rework in terms of the voltage settings there I'm not too sure but - mine was 50 millivolt overhauled so anyway okay the next thing is more of a personal things more of a subjective thing some people might look like the look of the extreme 6 however I found it to be a little bit tacky like things like the clip of the clips on the DIMM slots that were white I thought they should have been color-coded to blue and black another thing like the silver badging on the heatsinks the x99 and the asrock I thought that was a little bit weird I thought should have been printed on a little bit less subtle or a little bit more subtle sorry and another thing as well as the blue and black I think it didn't really do it for me I think you know instead of going with the in-between just go with a really simple look like the old black like the SLI plus or go full-out fancy rainbow LEDs because in terms of functionality and utility the extreme Stix is the best board I've had come through here out of the x99 series however in terms of looks it's the worst so you guys might want to have a little look at the look of this board and maybe change some colors up a little bit there as opposed with the marketing I mean the extreme ride I've had the Z is 77 the Brij I had the extreme 4 and when I got that it's sort of imprinted in my memory that hey the extreme low girl extreme brand means good onboard audio good a good NAC good overclocker though the extreme six has phenomenal onboard audio it has a phenomenal ni c it has a really good boss I can't test if it overclocks because of you guys know might as well ECP you lost the silicon lottery so I can't really test if this is an extremely good overclocking board or not though the other two departments really good so phenomenal and I'd like to see them maybe change up the naming a little bit like MSI did with the z87 gaming that made me hey research the board and say okay this is better than the previous generation I'm sticking with the same naming all the time you're sort of saying okay this is this this is this and this is this it's gonna continue on this way we've got a good onboard audio solution next gen we've got good though with the extreme six clearly this time you've got a phenomenal onboard audio solution so let that be known with a different name and make people like myself research it so anyway guys that being said there's not a lot more about this board it works so if you guys want a motherboard that just simply works and it's not gonna give you headaches then go get yourself a next ninety nine extreme for an extreme six from as rock because it it just works for me I'm headache free now when I use and when I overclock with my motherboard so really good job there everything else I mean the field the board have felt solid the utility and the functionality is board really good as well so kudos to you guys for making a really good motherboard and if you have any feedback or if you have any comments about this motherboard please leave a comment the comment section below and I'll catch you guys with another tech video very soon as for the price I think it comes in at around about 350 in Australia Japan I think it's under three hundred dollars there's around about two hundred and eighty in the u.s. so that price it's a really good board I mean the extreme fall is even cheaper I think it doesn't have the dual ni C though yeah maybe - the buttons as well but honestly the same core utility and functionality the same awesome onboard audio solution is still there as well so stream for the extremes man these are my new x99 recommendations for motherboards so hope you guys enjoyed this review if you did please get a thumbs up and I'll catch you guys in another tech review very soon peace out for now bye